A restaurant customer who orders his eggs cooked in an unmixed fashion such as sunnyside up, or over, expects and receives a product in which the egg yolk and the white are discrete and recognizable from one another. For these dishes the cook breaks and cooks the eggs without disturbing them, except perhaps for puncturing the yolks.
Depending on the type of restaurant, an order of scrambled eggs or an omelette will also be produced by the cook from eggs which he breaks and then stirs or whips. Restaurants and cafes with relatively slow traffic in egg dishes do provide shell eggs to the cook, who breaks them when he prepares every order.
There is another type of restaurant, in which egg dishes are an active, even dominant part of the menu, and which rely heavily on omelettes as a specialty and product leader. In such operations, the cook must produce omelettes at a considerable rate, so there is no time for him to break eggs. For such operations deshelled whole eggs are provided in a liquid, mixed and stabilized form. This product is sometimes called “Egg Wash”. It is the whole egg, mixed and stabilized, and supplied in a plastic bag. This bag is often confined in a cardboard box, and can conveniently be stored in a refrigerator located at the cook's omelette stand.
The advantages of this form of egg are evident. It arrives at the cook's stand free from the biological hazards of handling a whole unshelled egg. It can readily be portioned to suit an order for any number of eggs per order. Even more importantly, it is the same product as would have been produced from an egg that was shelled at the stand. The customer will not know the difference.
However advantageous the above is, and it is in widespread use, restaurant proprietors and public health inspectors are on nearly continuous alert because of the way the egg product is actually dispensed. In practice there is a cold-table insert for the egg product. The cook fills the insert from the bag and returns the bag to the refrigerator. Then he puts a ladle, usually one which conforms to a “one-egg” size, into the filled insert. When he makes the omelette, he doles out an amount respective to a number of eggs, one at a time, puts it in the pan, and returns the ladle to the insert when where it is kept until the next order.
Notice that the egg product in the insert will be exposed to the air for an undetermined length of time depending on activity, exposed to ambient temperature, subjected to repeated return of a ladle into the egg product, and subject to things passing into it, which they do. The temperature and sanitary condition of the egg product are of continuing and considerable importance. After the egg product has left the bag, its condition is no longer certain. Also, it becomes exposed to the question about sanitary condition of the insert.
These uncertainties plague the operators of restaurants with heavy egg traffic, and often result in negative grades from inspectors.
It is an object of this invention to provide liquid egg product in a strictly-sanitary condition up to the moment it is placed in the pan.
It is another object of this invention to provide a delivery system which can produce on demand egg product in desired aliquot quantities.
It is yet another object of this invention to produce a system that can readily be primed and sanitized, utilizing the same equipment as is used to deliver egg product to the pan.